Meeting of the Capital Ambition Board (CAB)

Thursday 12 December 2013

Conference Suite, London Councils offices, Southwark Street, 10:30am

Members Edward Lord OBE City of London, Chair Cllr Michael White LB Havering Cllr David Simmonds LB Hillingdon Cllr Paul McGlone LB Lambeth (deputising for Cllr Alambritis)

London Councils Nick Lester Corporate Director, Services Mary Vine-Morris Director, Capital Ambition Tim McCormick Programme Manager, Capital Ambition

Board Secretariat Ana Gradiska Principal Governance and Projects Officer

Presentations:

London Ventures Neil Sartorio (Director, EY) Victoria Evans (Manager, EY)

Enterprise Solutions Project Mark Picksley (Customer Intelligence Manager, LB Lambeth) Antonio Rizzo (Service Manager, Lewisham Library and Information Service, LB Lewisham) Paul Buddery (Partner, RSA 2020 Public Services)

WLA Property & Asset Management Project Andrew Travers (Chief Executive Officer, LB Barnet) Ian Nichol (Director, West London Alliance)

1. Declarations of interest

1.1 There were no declarations of interest.

2. Apologies

2.1 Apologies were received from Cllr Ruth Cadbury (LB Hounslow), Cllr Stephen Alambritis (LB Merton), Rita Dexter OBE (LFEPA), Martin Smith (LB Ealing), and Jane West (LB Hammersmith and Fulham).

3. Minutes of the meeting held on 7 October 2013 (including matters arising – ‘terms of reference action from 20 June).

3.1 These were agreed as an accurate record and the amended terms of reference were also agreed. 4. Director's report

4.1 The Corporate Director, Services introduced the item and gave an overview of the financial position, work programme and news items. He said that:

- Unfortunately there were three errors in the formulae for cash savings forecast. A revised version was handed out. The amendments were: CA206: should read £1.6m (instead of “£20m”), CA509 should read £47.2m (instead of “£7.2m”) and CA520 should read £6m (instead of “£11.5m”).
- All but one active project are considered on track and have GREEN status. One project Preferred Partner Shared Services Project (CA 517), is considered AMBER because there has been an absence of spending for some time and there have been delays in reporting progress and the forecast of benefits has not been confirmed.
- One project considered AMBER in October is now GREEN: Children's Care Funding Calculator (CA 514).

5. London Ventures update – verbal

5.1 The EY team explained that they were currently working on new commercial deals with at least three new partners and supporting Generation 1 activity. Progress would be reported in the January CAB meeting. They also gave brief updates on the following Generation 1 ventures:

- London Care Brokerage Service: the project was on track with the WLA, London Councils and boroughs on board for the Due Diligence stage.
- London Fraud Prevention Hub: EY and London Councils had submitted a funding bid to the EU and will find out whether they were successful in April. EY were currently working with eight potential providers.
- Crowd Funding Civic Projects: this project had gone live and was getting good media coverage. EY were aiming to get more local authorities signed up for it.
- Blue Prism Robotic Software: of the three boroughs that had expressed interest in this project, two remained in the process and one had postponed it to next year.
- Children's Social Care Risk Analysis: four London boroughs had expressed interest in this project, as well as authorities from outside London, such as Manchester. This project had academic support - UCL would be involved in evaluating and testing the model. EY asked the Board if they it agreed that councils outside London should be involved, and members confirmed that this was acceptable, since it would generate additional revenue.

5.2 EY also said that they were on track with the following Generation 2 projects: Oxygen Finance, Pitchwise, Business Angels and iTechnosoft, and their aim was to strike three commercial deals by the end of January.

5.3 In response to Member queries regarding Business Angels, EY said that they were currently having conversations with the local authorities in London and the Mayor's Office about pooling resources to ensure that the Business Angels project did not duplicate the LEP's SME work.

5.4 Members said they would discuss the Generation 1 projects with their political groups in order to increase the profile. 5.5 In response to member enquiries about interdependencies of projects, EY said that Blue Prism technology could support other future generation projects.

5.6 In response to member queries about Generation 3 projects, EY said that they haven’t yet had the resources to explore third generation projects in more detail although the current list stood at 12.

Action: EY to formally update on the 2nd generation delivery at the next meeting.

6. Benefits realisation case study – Enterprise Solutions (CA521)

6.1 Mark Picksley, Antonio Rizzo and Paul Buddery gave an update on the Enterprise Solutions project, which was designed to support the reform of London’s public services by supporting London’s local authorities innovative new social enterprise public service delivery models. The project was led by Lambeth council and involved partners from Richmond, Lewisham and Ealing councils, the latter being replaced by Kensington and Chelsea during the project. The RSA (and formerly Social Enterprise London) were the lead consultants in delivering the project.

6.2 The presenters made the following points:

- The Lambeth Campaigns and Communications team, which received support in the development of a business plan, has now become a company owned by the council and has begun trading.
- There was evidence that the reports and videos carried out as part of the LB Richmond project have been widely accessed. The video has been viewed around 260 times and has been mentioned by colleagues in local government and policy circles.
- The research presented in the ‘Barriers and Solutions’ report, undertaken by the University of Northampton, has been used as the basis of an academic article, currently with Policy and Politics journal for peer review, with publication likely in mid-2014.
- In LB Lewisham, the project included the development of community libraries and transferring the leases of the buildings to a social enterprise. Lewisham was also actively involved, along with 2020PSH (RSA), in organising a roundtable event looking at the experiences of library services in trying new models of ownership and control – including mutualisation – to meet the challenges they faced. The event was filmed and is available as a video. Community involvement was paramount to this project, especially in more deprived areas, as volunteers managed to increase community library use four-fold.

7. Project progress update – WLA Property & Asset Management (CA507)

7.1 Andrew Travers and Ian Nichol gave an update on the West London Alliance (WLA) property and Asset Management project. In March 2011, the CA Board awarded £165,438 towards the first year of WLA’s initial property and asset build scoping project. This explored the opportunities - and developed the business case - for further collaborative improvement and efficiency work in this area. In February 2012 and following the promising results of the first year, the CA Board awarded the WLA a further grant of £551,250 revenue to develop the work into a five-year Property & Asset Management Programme. At its core the programme works across all six West London boroughs, with participation varying across respective workstreams.

7.2 Presenters outlined the main achievements of the WLA Property & Asset Management Programme:

- Schools expansion: a pilot project between LB Ealing and LB Brent to create a bulge class was on track. A Pan-West London school planning forum was set up for the first time, and this has now been extended to SEN provision.
- Providing children’s residential places: this involved a proposed new 12-bed collaborative development in West London, where councils would have more control over the quality of provision.
- Rationalising the use of local authority buildings: A project to find a shared waste depot for LBs Brent and Barnet had proved unsuccessful.
- Developing a procurement toolkit for apprenticeships: this project was implemented in libraries/leisure and parking contracts.
- Energy efficiency and carbon reduction: the project would show significant savings over five years, and mitigate the effect of increasing energy prices.
- Rationalising public sector estates: the aim of this project was to tackle the ‘silod’ approach to property assets within the public sector. 320 properties owned by 21 public bodies, including MoD and NHS, were identified. The project would ultimately lead to intensified use of the sites, better public provision of the use of temporary accommodation (thus avoiding the cost of private B&Bs when housing homeless families).

7.3 Members agreed to extend the WLA Property project timeframe to the end of the 2014/15 financial year.

8. Any other business

8.1 There was no other business.

Action Points

| Item | Action | By | Progress | |------|--------|----|----------| | 5 | EY to formally update on the 2nd generation delivery at the next meeting. | EY | Report on agenda of CAB 10 February 2014 |